← Back Published on

Biofeedback Stirrup

The device, called S-class or the Biofeedback Stirrup, records the force applied by a rider to each stirrup using a load cell placed between the stirrup and the saddle. This device resides on each side of the saddle. When a rider applies force to the stirrup, the device saves the applied force in pounds and wirelessly combines the data from both load cells into an SD card that can be inputted to an excel file that plots the difference between the stirrups. The device is battery-powered and uses switches to initiate the collection of data from the device.

The Biofeedback’s purpose is to quantify the results of hippotherapy performed at the Lakeland Center by graphing the performance of the patients over a 10 minute session for 10 weeks with one session a week. This helps the client to see empirical evidence about how the rider is progressing throughout different therapy sessions. Seeing whether the clients are staying balanced in the stirrup while riding straight and responding correctly to the gait of the horse is the main goal of the device. The device is not real time, so the recorded data in the form of a graph must be analyzed after the session by our client. It
must be noted that the data cannot know what actions the horse is taking throughout the recording process so it is up to the analyzer to decipher the data with respect to the horses movements.